


Drasteria adumbrata

by starcunning



Series: Erebidae [9]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Elidibus is mentioned, F/M, Shadowbringers Spoilers, i don't actually know what to tag this, technically kallie's not the MAIN wol but u kno, yes even though this is set during ARR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 22:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20366449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starcunning/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: “We should go to Costa del Sol,” she said. “If there’s time.”The non-sequitur seemed to confuse him. “You want to take a vacation?”“It will be time for a Calamity soon, won’t it?” Kallisti wondered. “That’s why you’re doing all this? The last one changed things significantly. It seems a shame not to enjoy it while it lasts.”Nabriales pursed his lips beneath the rim of his mask. For a moment she thought he might refuse, but when he spoke, he said, “There is another place we should visit before the Ardor. It will not survive the Rejoining, and it is past time you were illuminated on certain matters.”





	Drasteria adumbrata

**Author's Note:**

> A birthday gift for an anonymous friend. Also available [on tumblr.](https://starcunning.tumblr.com/post/187219063159/drasteria-adumbrata)
> 
> _Drasteria adumbrata_ is also known as the shadowy arches moth.

The air in the cave was gelid. That might have been a problem once, long ago, but Kallisti had passed beyond such concerns in the moors of Yafaem. There was a stillness to the aether, too; much of it was likely bound up in the summoning of Saint Shiva.

That might have been a problem she was expected to address once, but to slay that false goddess would have seen Kallisti turned out from the shelter of the Warrens. She had been accepted among Iceheart’s heretics only by Nabriales’s insistence, being otherwise too recognizable a figure. And being still wanted for regicide, there was little to be done but shelter among the ice and snow while Nabriales and Igeyorhm directed events.

Soon enough, she had been assured, it would not really matter what she was accused of.

It was evening, and the wind whipped her indifferent cheeks as she strained to catch the last rays of the sun. The heavy blanket of clouds overhead dampened the sunset to something almost unrecognizable, but she did not turn her head as she felt the displacement of aether that presaged teleportation.

“Your work is done for the day?” she asked.  
The wordless affirmation was felt rather than heard, but Nabriales nodded. “What are you doing?” he asked after a moment.  
“Trying to remember what daylight looks like,” Kallisti replied. “It’s so cold here.”  
“You do suffer so, don’t you,” he said, tone dripping with false sweetness. “Things are drawing to a close.”  
“We should go to Costa del Sol,” she said. “If there’s time.”  
The non-sequitur seemed to confuse him. “You want to take a vacation?”  
“It will be time for a Calamity soon, won’t it?” Kallisti wondered. “That’s why you’re doing all this? The last one changed things significantly. It seems a shame not to enjoy it while it lasts.”  
Nabriales pursed his lips beneath the rim of his mask. For a moment she thought he might refuse, but when he spoke, he said, “There is another place we should visit before the Ardor. It will not survive the Rejoining, and it is past time you were illuminated on certain matters.”  
“My schedule is clear,” she said.

Nabriales extended one hand. The claws of his gauntlets glittered like ice in the dim light, but when she put her palm in his she was surprised to find he was as warm as ever. He drew her in, enfolding her in his own aether, his darkness blotting out her vision. She closed her eyes and leaned in against him, reaching out with her senses to feel him—not just the cloak of shadow wound around her like clouds around the moon, but the core of dark crystal at his heart. She felt it distantly, through her body and his, but focused upon it as she had learned to do when he had brought her to the Chrysalis.

She did not think they were headed there now, but dared not speculate on what might be so important to him that he would derelict his duties for it. It was easier to travel with an empty head in any case, so she focused only on the sound of her own breathing, and did not allow it to hitch as the teleportation hooked into her gut and reeled her along. It seemed to last a long time—longer than she was accustomed to, and when she felt earth beneath her feet once more it took her a moment to get her bearings.

They stood upon a stony beach—white rocks about the size of her fist dappled the shoreline. The water was clear blue, the waves dappled with golden light. Kallisti adjusted the brim of her hat, turning in a slow circle, but found no sun sinking upon the horizon. Against her better judgement she glanced up, expecting to find it at its zenith, but the firmament overhead was undifferentiated light—equal but opposite, in its way, to the clouds that blanketed Coerthas where she had stood but moments before.

She turned back to Nabriales, thinking to put the question to him, but he was cringing beneath the brilliant sky. Instead she asked, “What’s wrong?”  
“The Light,” he said. “It is anathema to us. Beneath the water is better, I’m told.” Then he was off, wading into the surf, Kallisti’s hand still in his own.  
“Where are we going?”  
“The Caliban Trench,” he replied. “To the last place the Light does not touch.”

He seemed eager to get there, already submerged to the waist. Kallisti’s robes billowed around her, the waves lapping at her chest. With her free hand she clutched at her hat.

“Nabriales,” she said, drawing him up short.  
He turned back to look at her, seeming baffled by her hesitation.  
“I still need to breathe.”  
“You had no such need when we visited the Chrysalis,” he pointed out.  
Her ears brushed the brim of her hat, laying back. “Why would the air of the Chrysalis be unsuitable?” she wondered.  
He grinned. “The moon you are all so keen to worship as a goddess is more like Dalamud than you think. It, too, serves as a prison, and at its heart slumbers Zodiark. The Chrysalis is as near as we are allowed to His presence.”  
She squinted, not merely at the brightness of the sky, but at him. “The Chrysalis is on the moon?”  
“In, rather, in much the same way the Sharlayan Antitower penetrates to the heart of the star, unto the borders of Hydaelyn’s influence,” Nabriales said.  
“Antitower?” she echoed. “What? I think I would have heard of it.”  
The Ascian’s smile broadened: “There is much that was kept from you,” he said. “The secrets of Sharlayan not least of all.” A wave broke upon his back, and he took a step closer to her.  
“I still don’t think I can do it,” she said.  
Nabriales merely shrugged, and then reached up to take her by the throat. With exacting delicacy he put the claw of his other forefinger to the side of her neck. She felt her pulse leap and then settle—surely the Echo would warn her somehow if she were in mortal danger.

Not that it would save her, she could not help but reflect. After all, Laurentius Daye had had her dead to rights, as Nabriales did then.

She could feel her blood trickle over her skin as he opened a slash in the side of her neck, so delicate as to be almost painless until the sea spray hit it, and then salt seared the wound. He turned her head by force, repeating the gesture on the other side. He reached into her, then, his aether commingling with hers and felt herself _rearranged—_not in the same way that Lensha might have done, straightening and reinforcing in the service of healing, but in a way that left her transmogrified thereafter. Her neck tensed, and new muscles flared—her _gills_ gaped, for that was what he had opened in the sides of her neck. She pressed her hand to his, feeling the edge, and then dove past him into the water. The drag of the water tore her hat from her head, but she abandoned it, reveling instead in the coolness that suffused her.

The light that permeated did not warm, but it was altogether more temperate than had been Coerthas—it did not seem to be winter here at all. As Nabriales caught up with her and they broke from the surface, threading through forests of seaweed, she recalled the question that had struck her first when she arrived, forestalled by the sight of him in pain. He seemed relaxed—even content—then, so she opened her mouth to ask the question. It came out in a rush of bubbles, and she felt water fill her lungs.

When it had finished—and she could walk along the seabed—she repeated the question. “What is this place?”  
“This is the First Reflection,” he said. “Mitron and Loghrif had primed it for Rejoining before they … retired from this place. When we trigger the Ardor upon our return, it will be reabsorbed into the Source.”  
“It looked a lot like La Noscea,” Kallisti noted.  
“Functionally, it is,” he replied. “I was born not far from here,” he said, “albeit on a different Reflection.”  
“The Twelfth,” she said, remembering distant Dravania.  
“Do not ask to see it,” he said. “It was Rejoined shortly after I was uplifted, some time after the Thirteenth collapsed.”  
“Do you miss it?” she wondered. “Do you never wish to go home?”  
“Where do you think I am taking you?” he wondered, his lips quirking in a crooked smile.

He led her then to a place where the current swept out to sea, and they let it carry them—past the shelf break, and they sunk to the slope. The water dimmed much of the light overhead, everything dimmed to a murky green that reminded her, almost, of home. Their passing startled schools of fish, and once a coterie of Sahagin drew near, but Nabriales’s sigil flared over his mask, and they dared no closer. Soon, however, they came upon it.

There was a vast ruin beneath the sea, in a trench that opened before them. Its structures were in ruin, shattered glass in broken tracery, spires of corroded metal stretching upward toward a surface they would never reach. Even broken, she could see its grandeur.

“What is this?” she asked. Something stirred in her breast—some half-forgotten dream of a memory not her own. Was it his?  
“This was Amaurot,” Nabriales said. “The original Nabriales was born there.”  
Her brow knit, and she looked from the city to his masked face and back.  
He reached out with his empty hand. A moment later her hat settled upon the crown of her head. She tugged it into place, ears swiveling and flicking to settle it correctly. “Shall we go down there?” he asked.

He awaited no answer, only stepped from the ledge. His robes billowed around him in the water as he sank. Kallisti clutched the brim of her hat and stepped after him. There was a walkway below, but it had crumbled into dozens of rough-hewn boulders. Still, when she touched down upon it, her feet met level ground, and she looked down to find the stone underfoot smooth and unbroken, graven with an elegant, regular zig-zag pattern. Nabriales offered her one gloved hand, and she took it, careful of his claws.

She could see fish and other creatures among the ruins, flitting through the water or peeking from the crevices. Still, for a bubble several yalms wide around the pair, the stone was repaired; the facades of the buildings gleamed; even grass and trees grew in the wells in the stone. Looking back at the way they had come, however, left no trace of their passage.

“What did you mean, ‘the original Nabriales?’” she wondered.  
“Oh, little fool,” he laughed. “Your mothercrystal would not have told you. Before She sundered the world, there was but one race of man, and we lived free of worry or need. We were ageless beings, and given to us was the power of creation. Nabriales is not a name, but a title, and we lived here, in Amaurot.”  
“Your name,” she said, tail twitching sluggishly behind her, “is _not_ Nabriales?”  
“No,” he said, as though this were obvious. He led her from the walkway up to one of the buildings. In one instant it was all but collapsed, the door sagging from the hinges; in the next it was pristine, lamps casting cones of light up the white marble facade. The door was heavy and paneled in bronze, and when he pushed it open they stepped into an atrium of golden yellow stone with bronze pilasters. The floor underfoot was inlaid with contrasting cream and deep brown stone. These too were bounded by gleaming metal.  
“So what was it?” she asked, approaching one of the empty benches there, wrought on a scale rather too broad for her.  
“I had thought you might like to know your own name,” he said. “You were Eris.”  
“We knew each other?” she said, reaching out to touch the lacquered wood. It was cold, but solid and real. “Were we lovers?”  
He laughed softly—not the triumphant sound she had grown so accustomed to, but something gentler, more intimate. “No,” he said. He reached out to curl his hand around her throat, tipping her chin upward.  
Her gaze lingered on the chandelier there, its milky glass and metal inlays reminding her of the nautilus shell motif of Sharlayan. “Who were you to me?” she asked softly.  
“We were rivals,” he said. “Of a kind. My colleagues and I were members of the Convocation of Fourteen, and you … were always bringing a dissenting opinion to our public addresses. Debate was something of a pastime in Amaurot, so none of us really minded. Elidibus,” he said, his tone souring, “was quite amused, actually.”  
“There are fourteen Ascians?” she mused. “I had assumed one for each shard, plus the Source, so wouldn’t that be fifteen?”  
Again his laughter sounded in her ear. “We were not Fourteen when Zodiark was made,” he said. “One of our number left after his wife, Helen, departed for one of the cities already in the grip of that first primordial calamity, which we summoned Zodiark to halt.”

“And it was _her_ fault,” came another voice. Kallisti whipped around, her robes swirling in the water. She regarded the newcomer, and was surprised to note that he was Garlean, of all things. He wore no robes and no mask, but a dress uniform heavy with medals. He looked at her for a moment, then scoffed and snapped his fingers. The room changed around them, the details of the mosaic refining into sharper clarity. “Really, Nabriales,” he said, “stick to what you’re best at.”  
“What is that?” Kallisti wondered, head canting beneath the brim of her hat.  
“Supercilious self-aggrandizement,” the man said. “‘The Majestic.’ Well. It certainly was not architecture—and not recruitment. Do you even recall the trouble _you_ caused, Eris?”  
“You knew me too,” Kallisti said, blinking in fascination.  
Nabriales shifted his weight, interposing himself between the pair. “Emet-Selch is of our number,” he said to her, then turned his face forward. There was a tension in his posture. “Why are you here?”  
“You are not subtle,” Emet-Selch said, rolling his golden eyes. “I am steward of this shard until it is rejoined, since I have no need of my mortal guise, and its original tenders sacrificed themselves to prime it. But why are _you_ here?”  
“To show her the city,” Nabriales replied. “It is her birthright, which Hydaelyn has kept from her.”  
“Mmm,” Emet-Selch temporized. “No. I suppose, being born to the Source, she might have better claim than _you_, pale shade that you are. What did you think? That she might become the new Mitron? Igeyorhm has already asked me to consider elevating her half-formed pet to Loghrif’s station. But _she_ is no Ebrietas, and _this_ is no Eris.”  
“She is as much Eris as I am Nereus,” Nabriales—_Nereus?_—said with quiet vehemence.  
Emet-Selch laughed, though it sounded deadened in the water. “She actually is more Eris than that,” he pointed out. “But she is _not_ Mitron, much as you might like to dream of her filling the seas with new life. When this shard is rejoined, we will go and find a _proper_ Mitron. Eris was the one responsible for Menelaus’s departure from the council; it is not just that _she_ should sit among us like she was fit to govern.”  
“That is Elidibus’s decision to make, not yours,” Nabriales said.  
“Oh, so his authority is at your convenience. I cannot imagine Lahabrea will speak for Ebrietas, and I certainly will not speak for Eris. Really, what will you do when you are denied?” Emet-Selch asked. “Put your head underwater and scream? You are already here, so I will leave you to it. Do remember,” he said, “that if things go poorly on the Source because you could not attend to the simple tasks you were given, we know exactly where to find the next Nabriales.”

It was a threat, Kallisti grasped instinctively, though she could not exactly put what it meant into words. Nabriales bristled, stepping further in front of her, blocking her view of the room beyond. When she looked to peer around him, Emet-Selch was gone.  
“Are you alright?” she asked. The new name felt strange upon her tongue, but she forced it over her lips just the same. “Nereus?”  
“He does love the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he,” the Ascian said.  
“Why do you remember this place and I don’t?” Kallisti wondered.  
“Because I was ascended, and while I can unmoor you from your mortality I cannot do _that._ That is reserved to Ascians of the Source—their souls are more complete and their powers greater. It is why you are stronger than me, when you remember how to be.”

She thought about that a moment, and then she pulled herself up onto one of the too-large benches, settling there with a sigh. “Elidibus knew,” she decided after a moment.  
“I have to assume so,” Nabriales agreed, materializing beside her.  
Kallisti leaned against him, letting his aether wash over her, much warmer than the seawater around them.  
“Who is Ebrietas?” she wondered.  
“She was Igeyorhm’s partner. She was not part of the Convocation.”  
“No, I mean, who is she now?”  
“Guess,” Nabriales laughed. “Who have you seen in Igeyorhm’s company of late?”  
“Wait, _Lensha?_” she said, sputtering.  
“The very same,” Nabriales confirmed. “She was of the faction that departed with Menelaus.”

“Who’s Menelaus?” Kallisti wondered. “I guess it would have to be Arenvald; he’s the only male Echo-blessed I can think of.”  
Nabriales shook his head. “We don’t always come back the same,” he said. “The other shard of Nabriales they have waiting in the wings should I ever require replacement is—you would recognize her as a Xaela Au Ra, though she would call herself something else. Menelaus could have incarnated as a woman. He has before, in eras past. But his last incarnation was shortly before the Sixth Ardor, known to you as the Calamity of Water. He usually does come back just as conditions are becoming ripe for a rejoining.”  
“So he could be Minfilia.”  
“He could, but he is not,” Nabriales said. “His absence has made us bold, it’s true; we would not have primed another shard so quickly, were he here to stand against us.”

“Why did he leave?”  
“He departed the council because he objected to our plans to halt the destruction of our very star. In pursuit of his wife he visited the cities across the sea, and was disturbed by what he saw there. That should have strengthened his convictions; instead it made him doubt. It is he that created Hydaelyn.”  
“_Created_ Hydaelyn?” Kallisti sat upright. “And you summoned Zodiark … but that would make them …”  
“At last you see, little fool,” he murmured, pulling her in to press his lips to her forehead. “Your goddess is the very thing you sought to destroy. What did you think Her blessing was, to protect you from tempering? Only the very same thing.”

Kallisti closed her eyes, but found little comfort in his embrace. She slipped from his grasp, and made for the door of the room, which now seemed much too close, for all it was vast. Nabriales followed after, his restorative bubble recreating the stoop out front. She left the door open as she withdrew, until they stood in the middle of a grassy plaza, the bounds of the Ascian’s influence clearly visible.

Beyond them—past the crumbling rim of their circle—the door to the building hung open, not returned to its crumbling state. She could see the gleaming metal inlaid upon the floor within, and the warm light of the chandelier spilled out into the ruin. A school of fish swam through the shaft of light, glittering, and darted into the chamber. She waited for it to decay; to crumble back to metal skeleton and shattered rock, but it did not. It stood, unchanging, and she stood facing it, feeling unexpectedly defiant.

“If you were to revive Zodiark,” Kallisti said softly, still staring into that open door, “what would you do?”  
“We would restore things to how they used to be in our time. Part of this would happen automatically—when the sundered souls come together—but we would use the powers of creation restored to us to recreate the rest.”  
“As Emet-Selch remade that room,” she said after a moment.  
“I am surprised he stopped there,” Nabriales admitted. “He is fond of gilding the lily.”  
“And nothing would ever change again,” Kallisti asked, not quite a question.  
Nabriales shook his head. “Life … would continue, of course; children would be born and new concepts would be developed and refined, but the ideal is a complete existence in a perfect world.”  
“I thought you were bringers of chaos.” Kallisti scoffed. “But really, you’re more bound to order than anyone.”  
He laughed, turning to embrace her, his clawed gloves pressed to her cheeks. “You sound just like you did then,” he said. “You were never happy here.”

She watched the ebb and flow of water through the city—invisible to mortal sight, but her aetherial senses were awakened to the subtlest change. Fish swam through the ruins, and some few creatures crept toward the open door, drawn toward the light that spilled out into the street. None dared approach the pair, skirting the bubble of restoration. They might have, Kallisti assumed. There was no barrier that separated the two of them from the vast seas. They were merely discomforted by the sudden change in the environment.

So too was she.  


“I don’t want this,” she said after a while. “I don’t want to suffocate under rules _or_ tempering.”  
“I wonder,” Nabriales said, “were I made whole, and none could dispute that I owned the name ‘Nereus,’ would you remember me?” His expression was half screened away by the mask, but the way he pursed his lips betrayed some discomfort with the question.  
“I don’t know,” she said.  
“Well,” he murmured. “We need not worry on that now. What strictures bind you we can find a way for you to slip. You were not of Her party when She was made. She has little hope of keeping you under Her thumb.”  
“I _am_ worried now,” Kallisti insisted. “If this city is my birthright, I want to abdicate. Would you choose me over this?” She reached for him, skimming her hands over his chest until she cupped his head between her palms, and put her thumbs to him to pry away the mask.  
It dissolved at her touch, and his dark eyes fixed on her. “Yes,” he said.  
“Then …” She paused, trying to organize her thoughts. “I don’t want to be Eris, and don’t really want you to be Nereus. Let them ascend the other Nabriales in your stead.”  
“You’re asking me to run away with you?”  
“Yes!” Kallisti said. “I think so.”  
“Where will we go?”  
“I don’t know!” she laughed. “Where do dragons come from? Meracydia, sure, but Lensha told me they were from somewhere else before that.”  
“True,” the Ascian said. “They arrived after the sundering of the shards, and none of the reflections have them.”  
“Then we have a destination,” Kallisti said.

He leaned down to kiss her, the warmth of him smothering in the cold, deep water. Something occurred to her, then.  
“If you’re giving up your title and your ancient name … what do I call you?”  
“My name before I was ascended …” He paused, seeming to think about it a long time. “It was … it was Brett.”  
“Hi, Brett,” she said, giggling. Then she said, “Do you think we have time to visit Costa del Sol before we leave?”


End file.
